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September 13, 2004

Looking for Blakely-ized clerks?

As discussed before here, the clerkship hiring season has officially begun, and rumor has it that federal judges are starting to arrange and conduct interviews. (Here you can get a sense of applicants' feelings as they seek what I still consider the greatest job to be had out of law school).

As this hiring process kicks into warp speed, I wonder if judges, both federal and state, are looking for clerks who have been "Blakely-ized." Since Blakely is the biggest legal story of the summer — with analogies drawn by others to cases like Brown and Roe — I would expect any serious applicant to be familiar with the decision and its aftermath.

But might at least some federal and state judges be looking for a lot of Blakely knowledge in a clerk, since Blakely issues are sure to be occupying courts for years to come no matter what the decision in Booker and Fanfan? Needless to say, any and every Ohio State applicant who crossed my path in the last few months has been fully Blakely-ized (and we all know how painful that can be).